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Tomás González: Niebla al mediodía (Fog at Noon)
Raul and Julia lived on a ranch in a very wet part of Colombia. The much-married Julia left him after two and a half years. Julia had accused him of being something of a recluse and he now becomes even more of one, selling his flat in Bogota and living permanently on his ranch. Raul has discovered bamboo. He grows it but, more importantly, he makes things out of it, including furniture and decorative features in houses. His talents are much in demand. One man even wanted an entire bamboo house. He declined but did build an entire bamboo/wattle and daub chapel. He even lectures on bamboo and has visited Japan.
When they first met their relationship was passionate – lots of sex – but very soon they were fighting. The key issue they did not agree on was her poetry. Yes, Julia was (in her words) an accomplished poet. My poetry was different from the rest of women’s poetry, or erotic poetry, whether written by men or women, in that I didn’t lose my head when I was writing; I never got carried away with sensuality. She repeatedly states how wonderful her poetry is and how fans of her blog and various small magazines love it. However two key characters disagree. The first is Raul who is not impressed and this lack of interest in her poetry is certainly a factor in her departure. The other is Raquel, Raul’s older sister, married to the fairly useless Julian. Raul may be in his fifties but she still looks on him as her kid brother and treats him as such. She cannot stand Julia (Raquel never understood how Raul could have been so in love with such a ninny ) and cannot stand Julia’s poetry and tells us frequently about her dislike for both. She even comments on Julia’s farewell note – This is some poorly written bullshit. When Raquel bites, she bites hard.
Julia is not just a poet and a serial wife – Raul is her fifth husband; there will be a sixth – she had had a career. She had been chief creative officer of an ad agency, making a fortune. More recently she was into yoga and opened yoga centres together with her friend Aleja and involving her daughter Diana, after mother and daughter had reconciled after a big row. Aleja is also one of the key commentators in this book and perhaps one of the few who does not seem too unbalanced even though she is obsessed with her maid’s snoring and foolishly lends a lot of money to Julia’s sixth husband.
The action moves around – New York, Bogota, Raul’s ranch, Julia’s ranch. They all seem wealthy enough to gallivant between the various locations and we get their reactions not just to each other but to the weather (a mild obsession), the current location and the people they meet.
Julia finally marries Humberto Fajardo who, sensibly, likes Julia’s poems even if he did not really understand them. Sadly we never get to see the poems to make our own judgement. Humberto seems to be well-off yet borrows money from ,Aleja. Like many of he characters in this book, he is a man of many sides – charming but can be bad-tempered.
However, after Julia and Humberto marry, Julia disappears. There are various suspicions – guerrillas, depression, hiding out. The police carry out what seems to be a casual investigation. They interview Raul, now living with a much younger former air hostess and assume that she is his daughter but their investigations lead nowhere. We get hints of what might have happened to her but, like other events in this book, there is a lot of ambiguity about it.
I can only say that is something of a strange book, though highly enjoyable none the less. At times it is very much down to earth while at others it is not entirely clear what is going on. Julia comes across as a ninny (to use Raquel’s term) , very much full of herself, not a good wife, not a good mother, not particularly a good friend but also not stupid, while Raul is talented but introverted and something of a loner. In short they were a couple you may well have seen in real life – totally unsuited to one another. If you enjoy a book, as I do, that at times seem to wandering this way and that, leaving you, the reader, bemused but interested, you will enjoy this book.
Publishing history
First published in 2015 by Alfaguara
First English translation in 2024 by Archipelago Books
Translated by Andrea Rosenberg